The birth of the official world golf rankings originated from the frustrations of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, which found in the mid-1980s that its system of issuing invitations to the Open Championship on a tour-by-tour basis was omitting an increasing number of top players because more of them were dividing their time between tours.

The system used to create the golf rankings was formulated by sports agent Mark McCormack, the first chairman of the committee which oversees them.

The first golf rankings list was published prior to the 1986 Masters tournament. The top six ranked golfers were Bernhard Langer, Seve Ballesteros, Sandy Lyle, Tom Watson, Mark O'Meara and Greg Norman. Thus the top three were all European, but there were 31 Americans in the top 50.

The method of calculation of the golf rankings has changed considerably over the years. All tournaments recognised by the world's professional tours, and some leading invitational events, were graded into categories ranging from Major championship to other tournaments.

In 1989 the golf rankings were changed to be based on the average points per event played, instead of simply total points earned. This was in order to more accurately reflect the status of some players, who played in far fewer events than their younger contemporaries, but demonstrated in Major championships that their ranking was artificially low.

In 1996 the three-year period over which golf rankings were calculated was reduced to two years, while other further changes to the mathematical formulae have been made again since.

Twelve players have been the official world number one and Tiger Woods has held that position since 2005.